


Never Lose You Again

by tei



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bloodplay, Body Modification, John Watson is a Saint, M/M, Possessive Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 15:09:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16477886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tei/pseuds/tei
Summary: Just because Sherlock Holmes has grown into a husband, father, and passing member of polite society, doesn't mean his feelings about John Watson are any less possessive.And sometimes, John can afford to indulge him.





	Never Lose You Again

**Author's Note:**

> Potential squicks in this story: home surgery, blood consumption.

One of the downsides of John’s insistence that his blog, as an advertising tool for their business, feature Sherlock in the role of hero, was that the criminal classes of London tended to have entirely the right idea about the nature of Sherlock’s attachment to John Watson. 

Being publicly regarded as a sort of superhero’s sole weakness had certain consequences, which John for the most part accepted cheerfully. He noted that despite Sherlock’s possessive tendencies, he made no complaint at John’s leaving him alone in the flat for thrice-weekly trainings at the local mixed martial arts school, nor the corresponding effect on John’s physique.

Which mostly had a filtering effect on the attempts made to get to Sherlock through John. If a criminal organization was able to capture John in the first place in an effort to engage Sherlock, chances were high that they were competent enough to be worth both of their time. 

As far as kidnappings went-- and John was a reluctant connoisseur by this point-- this one wasn’t bad. Competent, to have been able to get him in the first place, since these days most attempts to get to Sherlock through him ended in nothing more than an amusing anecdote to relate to his partner in the evening. 

Not that Sherlock saw it that way; to Sherlock, every instant where John was in danger without him-- where John was without him in _any_ way, really-- was more evidence in favour of his constantly evolving fantasies of Sherlock’s absolute possession of John Watson. They were cute and harmless, mostly, by this point, and John was fairly sure that Sherlock now only floated the more insane ones-- for instance, that he treat John’s after-clinic headaches with a trepanation hole, so that Sherlock could peer in and see John’s brain whenever he felt like it-- because he knew that John would only chuckle fondly and ruffle his hair in response. A sort of test to make sure that John, after nearly a decade of cohabitation with a madman, was still sanguine in the face of his husband’s more disturbing preoccupations. 

John, in fact, had learned to enjoy it; daily reminders of how completely excessively Sherlock loved him. He wasn’t going to let Sherlock send him off to work with a remotely-controlled vibrator inside of him to play with all day long, because he needed to actually _concentrate_ while he was treating patients, but it was rather flattering to know that Sherlock’s enormous intellect would consider flicking it on and off a perfectly absorbing day’s entertainment.

So Sherlock would probably have a few more choice suggestions after this episode, but John wasn’t worried about that. He only had a few bruises from the altercation-- they had sent a truly staggering number of kidnappers to nab one person, and once John had realized he had the sights of no less than six guns trained on him, he had sighed and reluctantly raised his hands to his head. The lead kidnapper, after confiscating his phone, had cheerfully acquiesced to John’s request that he text Mrs. Hudson to ask that she pick Rosie up from school, as he and Sherlock would both be occupied for the evening. 

Now he was locked in a basement, ankle cuffs chained to the wall but with his wrists tied in front of him, so that he had the use of his fingers. There was a box of granola bars and a bottle of water beside him, and a cushion for him to sit on. John ate, figuring he’d probably get the chance to punch someone’s lights out later and wanting to be fed and rested enough to enjoy it, and settled down to wait. 

***

The following evening, after Rosie was in bed, John finished the first draft of his usual self-effacing account of his escape and Sherlock’s iron-clad indictment of the gang’s weapons-smuggling ring, and snapped his laptop closed. 

Sherlock had been quiet all day, not insisting that John take the day off from clinic hours, but certainly not objecting when John had cancelled his morning to stay snuggled up on the couch with him for a few more hours after they dropped Rosie at school. He’d mouthed fondly at John’s hair, which had eventually turned into lazy, sloppy blowjobs on the floor of the living room, and when John had roused himself to go into the clinic for a few hours in the afternoon, he’d received no fewer than fifty-seven texts from Sherlock over the course of the shift, describing every detail of the world outside their window. He set his phone on silent, but he enjoyed knowing that they were still coming in, that Sherlock knew he would glance at them and smile in between every patient. 

Now they were back in the sitting room. Sherlock was at the table engaged in some sort of chemical analysis of the tea from a second-rate cafe across town which he had assured John was for a case much too boring to warrant his involvement. He looked up when John put his computer to the side, like he was expecting John to say something. 

“Fine,” said John. 

Sherlock’s face lit up, his mind visibly whirring as he flipped through his mental list of things he had asked of John that John hadn’t yet agreed to. Since it was a long list, and some of the items were either illegal or fatal or both, it took a few seconds before he said, “I knew you’d come around. It could barely even be classified as torture, really, or at least without experimental evidence, I can’t see how--”

John rolled his eyes. “Wrong,” he said. They had had a case a while back where a young man had been subjected to the procedure popularly known as Chinese water torture, and been liberated by the police in quite a pliant state of mind. Sherlock had been begging to be subjected to the method experimentally near-constantly ever since. “Still thinking about it, though,” he added.

Sherlock shivered slightly at the thought, then seemed to hit upon another idea. His eyes went wide.

“Truly?”

John shrugged. “After yesterday… it seems practical,” he admitted. 

“Oh,” breathed Sherlock, momentarily incapacitated with wonder. “Oh, _John._ ”

***  
John wasn’t supposed to know about the chips. 

Technically, Sherlock wasn’t supposed to know about them, either. But of course Mycroft had been well aware that if he brought his brother in on a case tangentially involving British agents whose locations Mycroft was able to ascertain with absolute certainty and stunning accuracy, Sherlock would eventually figure it out. 

“Implantable GPS chips,” he had said, peering over Mycroft’s shoulder at the tracking interface. “Miles ahead of the crude RFID implantables available to the public for their pets. They must require an implanted battery-- ah. Thus the involvement of the Norwegian researcher. The body’s own electrical signals as a power source. Elegant.” 

Then Sherlock had gotten a faraway look in his eye, and Mycroft had snapped “ _Do_ pay attention to the task at hand, brother mine,” and known that John Watson was going to get a text about this just as soon as Sherlock could slip away to send it. 

It took a truly humiliating level of civility and the promise of Easter dinner with their parents for Sherlock to extract two of the top-secret implantable GPS chips from Mycroft. It was all the more humiliating for the knowledge that Mycroft would probably have never handed them over if Sherlock wanted them for anything to do with a case. But no, his insufferable brother was more than capable of deducing that this particular request was purely _sentimental_ , and he slipped Sherlock a tiny paper bag with the two coin-sized chips with a smirk that made Sherlock want to punch him. 

It was all worth it, though, to see what John had set up while he’d been away. Rosie was down with Mrs. Hudson, cheerfully reading books and being fed an inappropriate number of sweets, but Sherlock didn’t mind because their kitchen had been transformed into a makeshift surgery. 

The table was covered in clean blue plastic sheeting, taped to the bottom so it didn’t slide off. Sherlock already owned several powerful lamps that could be clamped to the edge of a table, and John had set up two facing the same direction to form a bright workspace. To the side, he had laid out his tools: iodine disinfectant, several scalpels, needles, needle holder and and suture thread, and a banana. 

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t like John to mix food and medical work-- at least, if his comments about body parts in the refrigerator were to be believed.

Sherlock approached the table carefully--this was John’s space now, even he could see that-- and picked up the fruit. There was a long incision in the skin of it all the way from the stem to the base, which had then been carefully sewn up, each stitch placed and knotted individually so that if one failed, the rest would hold. There were several more incisions in the banana, of varying sizes and shapes, all repaired with the same care and attention as the long gash. John had been practicing. Beautiful, miraculous John Watson had been sewing up a banana while imagining it was Sherlock’s skin, and Sherlock wondered if perhaps he could keep the banana. How long could he keep it in the freezer before John threw it out? Could one freeze-dry a whole banana?

He was so absorbed in contemplation of the banana that he almost didn’t notice John descend the stairs and lean casually against the doorframe of the sitting-room, arms crossed in front of his chest. “Been a while since I’ve been able to take my time with that stuff,” he commented. “Even in the clinic we’re a bit rushed, and deployment was always more of a slap-some-superglue-on-it-and-pray thing.” 

Sherlock let the banana drop to his side. John was smiling softly. He looked a little bit amused, the way he always did when Sherlock was being odd and creepy, but he had laid out the table to cut into both his and Sherlock’s skin and put the GPS chips into their bodies and sew them up and keep them there, and then Sherlock would never lose him again, and it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened in the detective’s admittedly miraculous life. 

“You ready, then?” said John. 

Sherlock nodded. 

“Which one of us first?”

“Me first, said Sherlock decisively. “I don’t want to be distracted by the anticipation of you cutting into me, when I want to be concentrating on what I’m doing to you.”

John just chuckled. “That logic could work just as easily the other way around. And you can make the incision in me, but I’m doing the suturing, ta very much.”

“Very well,” said Sherlock docilely, even though he had very nimble fingers and could suture just fine, but John was rolling up his sleeves with his Doctor Face on, and the Doctor Face, like the Captain Face, was one of the many John Watsons that Sherlock wanted to climb inside of and know intimately, so he just watched and wondered as John washed in the kitchen sink from fingertip to elbow, businesslike and gorgeous. Sherlock placed the banana on top of the refrigerator, well away from the table of surgical implements. 

Sherlock’s breath was coming a little fast. John noticed, but misattributed the cause. He dropped a kiss on Sherlock’s temple as he snapped on a pair of gloves and _oh_ , that sound didn’t exactly help matters either. 

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” John reminded him. 

“I want to,” Sherlock said quickly, and his hoarse voice gave him away. John grinned. 

“Okay,” he said, “Sherlock, you can do whatever you want with me after these are in both of us, but no trying to get me hot while I’m working, okay?”

“Deal.” Sherlock’s cheeks flushed. The image of fucking John into the floor while licking stray droplets of blood from his skin suddenly presented itself. John’s strong fingers were on the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt, drawing it over his shoulders and discarding it on the floor. It occurred to him that he had never tasted John’s blood before. How on earth had they been together for nearly ten years and he had neglected to ever taste John’s blood?

John further manhandled him into position, sitting Sherlock down and placing his elbow and forearm flat against the table. He swabbed most of Sherlock’s upper arm with alcohol first, then rubbed over a smaller patch, towards the inside and just above the elbow, with iodine. Sherlock watched the sickly orange dry on his skin. “This an okay spot?” John checked. 

“Your choice,” Sherlock answered. The best spot was the spot that _John_ had decided on. He watched, entranced, as John started setting out his tools, only to pull back a little when he realized the vial John was plunging a small syringe into was Lidocaine. “No,” Sherlock said, “John, no, I want to feel you cut into me—“ 

John just chuckled and took a firm grasp of Sherlock’s arm, pulling him back towards the workspace. “Nope,” he said, the p popping between his lips as the needle slipped into Sherlock’s skin. Sherlock sighed, as dramatic and put-upon as he could manage, and was rewarded by a gentle kiss to his shoulder as John stood up to drop the used syringe in an old plastic bleach bottle in the corner of the table. “You absolute nutter,” John murmured. “I love you. Damn good thing that I love you. Okay, get ready.”

He pressed Sherlock’s palm down flat against the table and his shoulder angled downwards slightly, and picked up the scalpel. Sherlock watched, fascinated, as John sliced a deep half-moon just above his elbow. The injection didn’t completely numb the pain— a dull, nauseous feeling radiated from the spot as quickly as deep red blood started dribbling down his arm and onto the plastic on the table. 

As soon as the incision was complete, John dropped the scalpel and picked up the GPS chip, which had been waiting in a bowl full of alcohol. He settled it into place surprisingly easily, tucked with a sickening squishing sound into the layer of fat that he had exposed in Sherlock’s arm. He pushed Sherlock’s shoulder down a little bit more so that the chip couldn’t slip out before he could sew it up. 

The needle holder with the tiny, curved suture needle was entirely steady in John’s hand, and Sherlock could hardly decide whether he wanted to watch the thread wrapping around the tip of the needle holder to draw the would closed, or John’s calm, almost cheerful face as he did it. He settled on the former; he could watch John’s face when the doctor did this on himself. 

By the time John had placed four neat stitches across the gash in Sherlock’s arm, Sherlock felt like he was flying. John placed the needle and remaining length of thread attached to it in the sharps bleach bucket. There was blood seeping in channels down Sherlock’s elbow, but John had been Sherlock’s partner in everything for long enough to deduce that Sherlock wanted to keep as much evidence of this on him as possible to admire, so he didn’t clean it off, just placed a clean strip of gauze over the site and tied it loosely around the bottom of Sherlock’s bicep. He sat back with a satisfied look on his face. 

“What you wanted?”

Sherlock nodded, unable to wipe what must be a dopey grin off of his face. His elbow looked a gory mess. It was brilliant. John had cut him open, and changed him forever, and sewed him shut again, and it was the most wonderful event of his life, except for what was going to come next. 

First, though, he wanted to impress John a little bit. “Get your laptop,” he instructed, and went to his bedroom to find the USB stick where he had put a copy of the program that he’d written to interface with the chip. Later, he could get it working on their mobiles, but for now, he just plugged it into John’s computer. It was the work of minutes to boot it up and connect it to the live tracker in his own arm, and John’s eyes widened in surprise at the sensitivity as Sherlock crossed the flat into his bedroom and back again. 

“Wow,” he said. “Well, yeah, okay, well done, you. This will actually be useful.” 

Sherlock hid his smile by crossing the kitchen to wash his own hands fingertip to elbow, just as John had, careful not to wet the freshly closed wound or the blood painted on his skin beneath it. He relished the tug of the stiches as he stretched out his arm to reach into the sink. John was waiting, clearly aware that Sherlock wanted to do as much of this as John would let him. 

The feeling of floating on air twisted and pulled tighter around him as he pulled the Lidocaine from the vial. Sherlock felt invincible, first wiping John’s arm down with alcohol, slipping the needle into John’s arm in exactly the same place as John had done on him, then applying the iodine over the area where he was going to cut. 

He looked up at John’s face as he picked up the scalpel, and what he saw there nearly derailed him entirely. 

Sherlock knew that John loved him; of course he did. John told him all the time, and they had worked and lived together for ten years and raised a daughter together for half that. But Sherlock knew that his level of-- well, some of the more unpleasant Yarders would say _creepy obsession_ \-- with John wasn’t the norm. Sherlock didn’t love like a normal person. He wanted things, parts of John, that he probably shouldn’t. And John didn’t love Sherlock back the same way-- John loved him back the way John loved, not the way Sherlock loved, which was right and good and perfect, but sometimes Sherlock wondered if the novelty of his own particular brand of insanity would wear off and he would be left being simply _too much._

John was smiling softly. He looked lit from within, or more accurately from without-- like he was drawing all of the light from Sherlock that couldn’t find its way out of him any other way, and beaming it back at him. He looked safe and at peace and like there was nowhere he’d rather be than at his kitchen table, waiting for his husband to cut a gash into his arm. 

Sherlock obliged, pressing the scalpel in hard and tracing the same crescent into John’s skin as John had done for him. The flesh gave way easily and through the swell of blood he could see the fat underneath, into which he quickly pushed the second chip from the bowl of alcohol. John hissed a little as the sting of the thing sliding deep into his tissue pushed through the anaesthetic, but gave Sherlock a reassuring smile as he handed John the second suture needle. 

John, as it turned out, was extremely adept at stitching his own arm up. Sherlock stared as he pushed the needle through with the left hand and curled his right hand up to help tying it off. He did the first two like that, then looked up at Sherlock. “Just needed to make sure I could still do that kind of thing,” he admitted ruefully, and Sherlock tasted echoes of sand and blood and far-off shouts in his voice. 

Then, galaxies collided and entire worlds were born in the space where John _handed Sherlock the suture needle._ “Go on,” he said gently. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to get in a strop over me setting the rules for this, love. You can stitch me if you want.”

Sherlock _wanted_ like he _wanted_ the first time he heard the sound of a violin; pulled magnetically towards the absolute rightness of the thing, the surety that he had found something for him alone. John was his. He pushed the needle in one side, out the other, looped and tied of the knot, and John was a little more whole than he had been. 

Sherlock didn’t need to test John’s chip with the interface. They could take care of that later. The moment he finished taping gauze over the incision, he pounced. He wrestled John to the ground like he had so many times before, only pausing to ensure that John’s sensitive arm came to rest gently on the carpet. 

“Love, do you want to at least go to the bedroom?” John gasped. He couldn’t quite get enough air; he had 180 pounds of aroused detective on his chest, and Sherlock’s lips sucking bruises into his neck. 

Sherlock’s answer was to grind his hips into John’s. His cock, which had been half-hard throughout the entire gory process, was now stiff and wanting, and John moaned as his own twitched with interest. 

“Okay,” John panted. “Okay, got it, here is good.” 

“Anywhere I want you is good,” Sherlock growled, and god, it wasn’t strictly true, but it certainly _felt_ like it was true at the moment. “Yeah,” moaned John in response. “Yeah. I’m yours. All yours. _Sherlock,_ god. Get--” he lifted his hips so that Sherlock could slide his trousers and pants down, and toss them as far toward the corner as he could. 

John, because he was brilliant and knew Sherlock very, _very_ well, had placed a bottle of lube in with the gauze and extra thread on the edge of the table. Sherlock was able to keep holding John down with one hand while he reached up with the other-- not that John was trying to get away, certainly not, but it was the principle of the thing. 

John sighed when Sherlock slipped a finger into him, shuffling closer and relaxing entirely into the probing, possessive touch. John was so _good_ at this. He always knew exactly when Sherlock needed to claim him entirely, body and soul-- and on other occasions, he could bend Sherlock to his will like a rag doll. Now, though, he just relaxed further and further, pliant and receptive as Sherlock worked him first with his fingers, then lined up his cock and pushed in. 

John’s tight heat clenched around him and Sherlock wanted more, he knew what he wanted-- better to ask about this, probably. John’s tolerance had limits. He gently lifted John’s elbow, where there was still a little fresh blood leaking out from underneath the gauze. He just held it for a moment, while he sunk all the way into John’s body. John groaned, and fixed his eyes on where Sherlock was gripping him. 

He saw the question in Sherlock’s eyes, and smiled. “Yeah, okay,” he said, “just this once, Sherlock, okay? I don’t need you--” he gasped as Sherlock drew partway out and pistoned into him again-- “trying to lick me every time I get injured on the job.”

“I won’t,” promised Sherlock. “Every time you get injured on the job, I’ll be too busy hunting down the person responsible and ending them.” He lapped up the rivulet of blood, tasting salt and iron and gunmetal and sunlight. _John._

When the fresh trickle was gone, he gently placed John’s arm back on the ground and started fucking him in earnest. He was pushing John into the floor with a force that made him slide slightly with each thrust and would, he knew from experience, leave gorgeous rug burns on the small of his back. He wanted to capture each huff of air that was forced from John’s chest and draw it into his own lungs, and saw no reason why he shouldn’t, so he bent down to place his mouth over John’s until they were both bucking and spending into and on each other, and the dull ache in his arm was pushing through the bliss of the orgasm, and everything was perfect. 

 

John allowed Sherlock to lie on the floor, utterly spent and, by the looks of it, somewhat shocked that that had really just happened. He kept staring at his arm, and then at John’s arm, and back again, with the dazed expression that only overtook him when either he or John had just been quite thoroughly fucked. 

John, having slightly fewer of whatever crossed wires caused Sherlock to savour any pain that John inflicted on him like fine wine, roused himself when he felt the Lidocaine in his arm begin to wear off and swallowed a few paracetamol. He took pictures of the bloody plastic-covered kitchen table, suspecting that Sherlock would want them once his brain got back online. Then he gathered all of the sharps into the bleach bottle and wrapped up the entire mess in the plastic sheeting, stuffing it into a garbage bag. It was a rather tidy job, all things considered; there was practically no evidence that he had just performed minor surgery in their kitchen besides the blissed-out, blood-covered detective lying naked on the floor. 

He lay back down behind Sherlock, skin-to-skin, sighing happily. He tangled his fingers in Sherlock’s hair, pulling a tiny bit to bring him back down to earth enough to hear John when he said, “So, these chips. This should be fun.” 

***

The next day, John took an early lunch break from the clinic and headed to Angelo’s. He brought some journal articles he’d been meaning to get to-- it was possible that Sherlock had gotten absorbed in something over the course of the morning, after all -- and settled in their usual table. 

Sherlock was there within two minutes, which meant he had left the flat before John had arrived at the restaurant, which meant he had indeed been staring raptly at the little dot that represented John Watson on his computer all morning long, and deduced John’s intentions from the timing of his lunch and his trajectory from the clinic. 

John grinned, and leaned over to gently stroke down Sherlock’s bicep as he sat down; a comforting gesture, to anyone watching, but John only had eyes for the delighted wince that it elicited from Sherlock. “Enjoying yourself today, then, are you?”

In answer, Sherlock returned the gesture, brushing John’s arm for the reciprocal satisfaction of John’s pain. “Thank you,” he murmured.

John paused a moment before he answered, emphatically, “My pleasure.”

Sherlock hummed contentedly. He pulled out his phone and loaded up the tracking screen to lay it out on the table while they ate. It displayed the two dots-- him and John-- right over top of each other, inside of each other, just the way they should be.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr or twitter @ teiandcookies, or dreamwidth and pillowfort @ tei


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